The Nexus Silent Mouse is a welcome addition to my silent domain. Especially when that domain has to relocate to quiet libraries and lecture halls for study and work purposes!

In short: A small, silenced, wireless mouse with three buttons, uses AA batteries, right hand only.
The cost: 26 EUR.
Availability: Now. Mine took a week to arrive in Finland.

Overall feel
This mouse does what it says on the label: the clicks are muted and the scroll wheel doesn't rattle much. The buttons and wheel still make a rather audible sound, however, so don't be fooled by the marketing phrase "without the clicking-sound". They just mean it's a different kind of sound now; it's more of a soft pop than a sharp click. The mouse is pleasant and accurate enough to use, fits my man-hands okay and the design incorporates all necessary elements, meaning mostly the "nano-sized" receiver and its compartment. I got what I paid for.

The good!
Clicks are muted, almost inaudible from a distance. Pleasant even when heard. Scrolling is top notch, wheel doesn't rattle much and is very accurate. Movement is accurate enough for most uses (the DPI switch is a nice touch, even if you only use it once). The design is modern and perfectly acceptable, even if it lacks highlights. Functionality is good.

The bad.
No on/off switch means wasted battery life. Mouse is hollow, amplifying sound, and the bottom-heavy weight distribution annoys me personally: I often end up moving the front end of the mouse faster, making an arc instead of a line. Prototype problems a more professional maker would have figured out in the lab, but Nexus is new to the mouse business.

The meh
The feet could be made of a slicker material (I'm used to gamer-grade glide feet, very quiet, very fast). I am also not particular to the grip coating used on the Nexus mouse. It feels fuzzy and cheap, and I can imagine it being a fluff and dirt magnet in my backpack. Some people may not like the mouse having only three buttons, but I personally don't mind - five would be appreciated though. What I do mind is the poor packaging (awful rip-and-tear blister), subpar language and attention to detail ("Nexys"!?) and the overall cheap-Asian-subcontractor feel of the thing - but hey, for 26 euros it's not all that bad, really.

Final verdict: Good Buy if you really need it. Otherwise just a regular mouse with a special gimmick.

Thanks for posting -- too bad there isn't a larger version with two thumb buttons; or a Bluetooth version.

Cheers Neil!

In case this one takes off, I don't see why they might not introduce a "desktop" version in the future. Might take some official reviews and incentive though, wink-wink.

Personally I would prefer Bluetooth too. Would cut down on the number of receivers one needs to keep knocking around the house and plugged into USB ports, which are scarce on some laptops to begin with. Then again, the Bluetooth chip and software on my Asus UL30A are a bitch to deal with, so maybe not, after all...

Thanks for the review. I was wondering, does this technology only reduce noise, or is the resistance/feedback when clicking also lowered? A noiseless mouse would be great, but I would also like a mouse that didn't have so terribly much resistance in the buttons. I see there's also another quiet mouse available, the JCSO JNL-101K.

The Nexus mouse buttons feel smoother to press than my Deathadder's: it's a soft sinking sensation rather than a sharp plunge. Effort involved I would say is slightly less than gaming mice, noticeably softer than cheap desktop mice.

Sounds good, thanks. Even if it doesn't turn out to be that great I could use a spare wireless mouse, and it's pretty cheap from Multitronic right now.

Addendum to the Impressions

Now, after five months of weekly and sometimes daily use, I feel like I should chime in regarding my experiences with the Nexus Silent Mouse.

My general opinion of the mouse in this time has shifted slightly for the worse. It has been an adequate companion in portable use and it is still pleasantly quiet, but there are some annoying qualities to the mouse that have not improved or have even become more pronounced in prolonged use.

The most disruptive of these annoyances is the two main buttons (LMB, RMB) sticking together. The "nose" on the mouse is an "open" split (as you can see from http://www.nexustek.nl/images/silentmouseproductpagetop.jpg) and the buttons reach towards each other with small protrusions. In a close-up the design looks perfectly acceptable, but in practice it is not: the protrusions are actually wedge-like and not two straight surfaces. Worse than that, the motion of the buttons is not vertically linear, but happens at an angle towards one another... you can already see where this is going. The nail in the coffin is the play present in the buttons, which all too often causes one button to slide under or on top of the other, becoming stuck or unable to fully depress. This results from both poor design and what I feel to be lacking build quality.

The other things have to do with mechanics as well. The motion and accuracy I originally described as adequate, but have found out that this impression really only applies to small screens (13" in my case) and low resolutions. On larger monitors and higher resolutions (1920x1200) the mouse is inaccurate by modern standards and at times unresponsive by any standards - except when it moves by itself, popping up player controls during an intense movie scene. The mouse also regularly desyncs from its receiver after unplugging and has to be reset, which is unforgivable, as it uses a proprietary receiver that cannot be used with other peripherals.

On the upside, I've gotten used to the coating and bottom-heavy movement and the scroll wheel is still steady and accurate (I scroll through documents for a living). The movement pattern got even worse with heavy rechargeable batteries.

In summary, the Silent Mouse "1.0" still justifies its existence in portable use with small screens and low resolutions, but it has some rather annoying prototype-ish issues that can get really infuriating when you're doing intensive work on a large monitor, especially if you own or have experience with better hardware. It does its "quiet" jig well, but in use it has been an inferior specimen mechanically. For 30 euros I still feel I got what I paid for, but would have willingly paid more had I known the product's quality to be such as it was.

The mouse is still adequate at its job, but with these flaws and better models out, I wouldn't recommend it.


PS. From what I can see, Nexus may have corrected the "sticking buttons" issue in future versions with more conservative designs. There are also laser engines in the new models that may help with accuracy and one can hope the firmware has been tweaked to be more responsive. They have also done away with the useless DPI button. What I fear will still be there is the somewhat lacking build quality - I'm sure we could all spare more than 30 euros on a good mouse if one was offered.

PPS. The sticking is not the only problem with LMB and RMB, they're also very fidgety and a bit numb due to the play and what I can assume to be switch design. This often results in accidental double-clicks.